Syntectonic Hydrocarbon Migration and Accumulation in Miley Reservoir, Rincon Field, Ventura County, California

David E. Nelson, Robert A. Harrison

The Miley reservoir of the Rincon field is located in the Central Transverse Ranges of southern California on a structural high that borders the Santa Barbara Channel. The east-west-trending Rincon and Ventura anticlines are part of a major oil-productive trend containing the Rincon, San Miguelito, and Ventura Avenue fields, which have estimated ultimate recovery of 1.7 billion BOE.

Hydrocarbon accumulations in the multiple and stacked reservoirs within these three fields are controlled by the complex interplay of late Pleistocene folding and reverse fault development. The detailed interpretation reported here combines reservoir performance data with subsurface structural geology and sequential tectonic development to provide a new understanding of the relationship of migration barriers to oil accumulation and production.

The Miley reservoir is an axial- and fault-controlled accumulation on the eastern terminus of the Rincon anticline. It is located in a structural saddle formed by the doubly plunging Rincon and Ventura anticlinal trend. Three operative trapping mechanisms confine oil pools: (1) axial accumulations associated with reverse fault closures; (2) traps on the hanging wall of dip-slip reverse faults; and (3) a permeability barrier developed in response to flexural slip folding.

Oil trapped within the Rincon-Miley reservoir was primarily generated beneath the Santa Barbara Channel and migrated up the south flank of the anticlinal trend. Four stages of structural development and hydrocarbon migration, encompassing the last 700,000 years, have implications for the enhanced development of reservoirs on this anticlinal trend.

AAPG Search and Discovery Article #91038©1987 AAPG Annual Convention, Los Angeles, California, June 7-10, 1987.